Bird in a Cage
by ashestoashesanddusttodust
Summary: Clint's spent his short life going from one figurative cage to another. It's not much of a surprise when he ends up in an actual cage. The wings are a new touch though.
1. Chapter 1

**Bird in a Cage  
**

**A Word**: Avengerkink prompt for an early run in with Ross that leads to the discovery of a mistreated and terrified teen with golden wings in a cage by Bruce/Hulk. Cue saving and reluctant bro bonding as they run from the military.

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Clint's life is full of cages and loud men with balled up fists. He's used to it by now, but he's still terrified when he winds up in his newest cage. It's the drugs mostly. The one used to subdue him and the ones that came after. That make the skin on his back itch and his spine feel like its molten fire. Burning hotter and hotter until Clint's clawing at the metal floor through the bars he's lying on and _screaming_.

The fire licks through him with the precision of a razor blade and spills out. Through his darkening vision, Clint can see a sluggish pool of dark blood spread out below him. Over the roaring in his ears he can hear the excited murmur of the men who did this to him and, fortunately, he passes out before he can make sense of it.

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Clint swims in and out of consciousness for an unspecified time that's terrifying to him.

He sees faces over his, feels hands on him, and has one very vivid memory of a needle piercing through his skin. The pain is always there. Duller some times than others.

Clint wakes up on his stomach and it's so bad that he can't stand the heavy weight of the blanket covering him, but his struggles to push it off only make the pain grow worse until he gives up. He lays there on the bars, panting, and dully notes the flaking patches of blood under the bars. Dried and flaky with age, but it's impossible to tell how much.

Men move around his cage, but none of them spare him a look. They're looking at screens and microscopes far more expensive than the kind he used to see at school. A few are writing complex looking numbers on a board and are arguing about something from their sharp gestures.

There's a man in army clothes watching over it all near the door. His face is hard and the fists clenched behind his back look like they'll hurt.

Clint closes his eyes to it all. Too exhausted to do anything else.

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There's no blanket on him, Clint finds out when he next wakes and finds the energy to move his head.

They're wings, and they're growing out of two bloody holes in his back.

Clint screams, a cracked wail that doesn't make a single one of the men in the room flinch.

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They're brown, the wings, a mix of light browns that almost looks golden in different lighting. Just like his hair. It hurts to touch them, and moving them -forced by two of the men who periodically climb into the cage with empty needles for blood- is absolute agony. Clint passes out the first time uncaring hands impatiently move a wing aside.

They're also heavy and Clint can't stand or sit up with the weight of them dragging him down at first. A humiliating experience when he can't even raise himself up enough to use the funnel strapped to one of the bars as a urinal. It all swirls down to a drain under the bars eventually anyway, and Clint's covered in more than just piss. Eventually it gets too much for the men ignoring his questions and pleas. Another big man in army clothes comes in and turns a hose on the cage.

Clint chokes on the water and a scream as the blast hits the wings and his face full on. It's a horrible relief. The soldier doesn't even really look at him as he soaks Clint from head to toe and chases a filthy stream of water towards the drain. Just like Clint used to do when it was his turn to muck out the lion's cage.

Except he had the decency to not deliberately aim at the lions if they didn't want to get wet. The spray follows him as he crawls as far away as he can. Trying to get some distance to lessen the water pressure, and failing to gain any relief at all.

"We could get some Febreeze," Clint hears one of the men mutter to another when the hose is turned off and the soldier leaves.

Clint curls up where he is, and winces as the wings move jerkily to flop over his pulled up knees. He shiver himself to an uneasy sleep.

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The men are scientists of some kind, and they're working with the army guys. Clint sees the severe man again a few times. Always followed by lackeys and pushing for answers he doesn't seem to like from the scientists. He hasn't stopped to look at Clint once.

He can't help thinking that's a good thing.

Words like "radiation", "serum", and "creature" get thrown around a lot when Clint bothers to listen in. He doesn't bother often because he's afraid they're talking about _him_ when they say those words and it scares the living shit out of him.

Clint spends most of his time on the wings he still hasn't quite accepted as his own just yet. He's a freak, he knows it, but his mind reels back from it. Denying that it's real even as he touches the raw area of scar tissue building up around the wings. Slipping a finger painfully into the still torn skin and not being able to feel where they end. Feeling something hard that he realizes with a sick twist in his stomach might be his _spine_ leading seamlessly to them.

They hurt less now and Clint gets a confusing sense of _feeling_ from them. He can feel them dragging when he crawls around, can flex them up and out of the way if he really tries. They're big though. Far too big for the cage he's in, and flexing them always ends with more pain when he does it too hard and they smack into the metal.

He'd stop, but it lets him sit up for the first time in a long while. Gets him off his bruised hands and knees. Eventually, he manages to stand. His back screams in protest as the wings shift and are dragged down by gravity. Something pops audibly in his back and Clint clings to the bars as his vision swims with a sudden rush of pain that leaves him breathless and near tears. It fades fast, like a nose getting reset, and all he's left with is a dull ache and a sense that something has settled into proper alignment.

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His new mobility doesn't gain Clint anything other than a bit of relief.

For the first time, he wonders if Barney is looking for him. The wings -_his_ wings- twitch and Clint remembers the last time he'd really talked to his brother. Weeks before any of this. Of the sneer he'd had for the new talent for the circus' freak show. Minutes before he brushed Clint off, again, for Duquesne and one of his scams.

Clint doesn't think about Barney much.

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They're not feeding him anymore, and the bits of water he can choke down when the hose comes out doesn't do anything for the knots turning his stomach into a yawning chasm of pain.

They used to throw a fruit or bar of some kind near him when they drew blood every day, but they've stopped that now. The conversation is shifting in the room and there's excited mutterings about getting their hands on the "original" that don't spell anything good for Clint.

He shivers in the corner despite the added insulation of the wings he can now clumsily wrap around himself, and watches as the board gets wiped clean. The vials and slides of his blood get boxed up with all the paper and files they've been passing around, and get carted off by blank faced soldiers.

The guy in charge is there. Watching with a slight smile Clint doesn't like. He stops by the cage on his way out and looks at Clint for the first time.

Clint's tired and hungry, the only relief he gets is from sleep. He doesn't sleep at all after that though, too terrified he'll never wake up.

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They bring a hobo in chains in. The man's clothing is worn but cared for, and his shoes show the kind of hard use that's only had from traveling on foot. His eyes aren't really open and he staggers under the very cautious grip of the soldiers leading him up to an examination table that's been brought in.

It's a massive slab of metal with restraints at the place of hands and legs big enough for Clint to get free from if it was closed around his chest. _With_ the wings.

One of the soldiers hooks up a pole he was carrying to the edge of the table. It holds a series of bags that feed into the man's pale arms. Probably the drugs making him blink slowly up at the ceiling in confusion. There's three of them, and one of them looks like it's _glowing_ a pale blue.

Clint edges toward the bars to get a closer look between the flurry of activity as the scientists start hooking up all kinds of things to the man. The soldiers step back, and take up a guarded position by the door. Out of the way but their eyes firmly fixed on the table as the scientists get to work.

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Something goes wrong. Clint doesn't know what happens just as the first blood draw gets started -they'd all gone so silent, almost _reverent_ when the needle pierced the skin- and there's no time to process anything as the man arches on the table and _roars_.

Face flushing red with blood and a dark rage that sends Clint scrambling back. Copying everyone in the room as panic breaks out. The scientists are shouting and the soldiers are yelling. Pushing forward against the wave of men who only seem to want to get _away_.

He sees why when the man's skin goes right past red to green. When his face bulges and shifts. When he starts to change and _grow_. Clothing ripping and table groaning under the mass of him.

The room goes deadly quiet as the man -"creature", "original", they'd all tossed those words around and it _wasn't_ just about Clint- glares around the room once, before bellowing and sweeping a large arm forward. Slamming a wave of scientists into the far walls with final sounding cracks that leave them limp and most likely dead.

An alarm screams through the air and it's chaos as bullets rip through the air. Clint presses himself as close to the floor as he can, feeling his heart trip almost too fast, because the bullets aren't even aimed! Two scientists fall with bullet holes in their heads, and the ones that _are_ on target?

The green man shivers and shakes them off like they're flies before ripping the sturdy looking table up and crushing the soldiers with it.

"God, oh, god no," one of the scientists backs up to Clint's cage and his hands scrabble at the bars. Looking for an escape that Clint already knows isn't possible as the green man lays waste to the room and its occupants with only a few more flicks of his massive arms. His head turns at the sound of words and Clint can smell it when the man pisses himself. "No! Please, don-"

Fingers the size of Clint's forearm engulf the man's head and he's yanked away like a rag doll and tossed. Clint doesn't care about the cut off scream, feels a little burn of satisfaction at it that dies as the green man turns around and Clint's looking up into the angriest eyes he's ever seen. And Clint's had his fair share of stare downs with angry men.

They usually end with their fists in Clint's face.

"Hi," Clint's voice is hoarse from disuse and the fact that he hasn't had water in way too long. The hose had stopped being pulled out when the table was brought in.

The man growls and it's hostile and full of violence. The smart thing to do would be to look away. To curl himself up into a tiny, unspeaking ball and hope all that anger and hostility get turned away from him. Clint knows this, it was taught to him early on by his dad and reinforced by years of foster care. Keep your head down and your mouth shut, and you won't make yourself a target. Won't draw in the hits as much.

Clint _knows_ this. Clint's just never been a very smart guy.

"Hey, big guy," Clint gets up into a crouch, and can feel his wings arch away from his back to give him the room. They quiver slightly in anticipation. "Don't suppose you could open the cage and let me out of here?"

He's asked the scientists too even though he knew it'd do no good. Never hurts to ask after all. Usually.

The man takes a sharp step forward that has Clint flinching and roars. Loud and angry, and Clint's convinced he's going to die right then and there before the clicking noise registers. There's wires coming out of the man's back that fall away as he turns back to the door and it's fresh supply of soldiers who have just _tased_ him.

Clint doesn't think that was such a good idea on their parts when the man runs forward. Low like a linebacker and smashes through them, and what sounds like a wall or two after.

He's alone in a wrecked room full of corpses now, with only the sound of distant screams and gunfire. It's probably the best place he's been in since he wandered a little too far from the circus.

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The cage has a door that's operated by an electronic lock. No buttons, just a card reader. Clint can pick a mechanical lock in a matter of seconds like any other carnie, but anything with computers is more than a little beyond him. Doesn't mean he isn't going to try though.

There's a nice looking curl of sharp metal on the floor that looks like it'd be great for cutting things open, and Clint's on his stomach trying to get it. His arm is jammed as far out of the cage as he can get it, face smashed against the cold bars as he squints at the metal. He's close, so close he swears he can feel the tips of his fingers brushing the edges. "Come on, come on."

The shard wiggles, _away_ from him. "Aw, man no."

Clint's contemplating how much life sucks when he realizes there's more green in the blurred out periphery of his vision than there was before.

"Uh, hey," Clint draws his arm carefully back into the cage and looks over to find out that the extremely large man has somehow managed to sneak back into the room and is now crouched near the cage. Looking at him. Silently, creepily. Clint gets his feet under him and wraps his wings tight around his chest to make a smaller target.

The man's eyes seem to zero in on the movement and he frowns. An expansive thing given the size of his face. There's not much rage in his face now, Clint notes, anger is still there but it's not focused. If anything the man looks kind of curious.

"I'm Clint. Are the-" soldiers, scientists, actual government agents? Clint's still not sure what the hell he's been brought into. "The bad guys all dead?"

"Dead," the man says, and it comes out as a deep growl. His lips twitch with satisfaction and he rolls up to his feet. He's taller than the cage and can actually look in it from above. Two massive hands thread through the bars and Clint should be more afraid right now than he actually is. "Bird boy go now."

The cage lurches and squeals as the man easily pulls the bars apart. Creating a hole large enough for Clint to climb out of. The man steps back then and hunkers down again. Watching quietly as Clint moves forward.

It's obvious the cage wouldn't hold the man back if he didn't want it to, and Clint hesitates for only a second. He's known a lot of men with angry eyes and large fists in his life. Looking at the green man again, Clint remembers that not all of them had been cruel to those who didn't deserve it.

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Clint breathes easier the second he's out of the cage, and he stretches the way he couldn't while inside of it. His wings stretch too, and Clint winces at the brief pain of a few more things popping and sliding into place.

Something hits his right wing and Clint looks over, startled, to see a single large finger poking carefully at him. The man looks wholly fascinated now, and that only spells good things for Clint in the long run so he lets it go on for a while before carefully bringing his wings back down. It's still odd and takes concentration, but they flatten against his back in a way that's almost comfortable. In a way that makes walking a little easier.

"So," Clint says after a few off balanced steps gets him a snort of amusement from the man. "I'm Clint, or Bird Boy I guess, whatever. Who're you?"

"Hulk," the man says clearly, and Clint's starting to think the growl is just his natural voice. That the roars and non-vocal noises are what he mostly uses.

"Hulk, got it. So where-" Clint finishes his sentence with a strangled yelp as he's suddenly picked up by a hand that can completely encircle him with ease. "Hey!"

He's pulled in close to Hulk's chest and ends up cradled there in a weird football carry that he gets exactly two seconds to get angry over before Hulk starts running. Fast. As fast as the trick horses he was learning to put to their paces, maybe even a little faster actually.

The base blurs by him and he picks out only a few details. Wrecked walls and streaks of blood. Hulk roars and his free hand flies out, smashing into a wall, and Clint flinches as they barrel through the flying debris before it has a chance to settle. Two more walls sees them outside, and Clint shivers hard at the sudden drop in temperature when a breeze hits him.

Hulk crouches down for a few seconds and Clint realizes he's looking at something. What becomes apparent when Clint catches the faint sound of a helicopter. Helicopters, maybe. "Oh, shit, backup."

Hulk growls and deliberately turns away from where the helicopters are coming from. His crouch gets deeper and before Clint can ask anything, he _jumps_.

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Hulk's jumps can eat up _miles_ of space at a time when he really gets going. It's uncomfortable as hell though and Clint's just glad his back isn't as bad as it was before as he grits his teeth through each landing.

They've left the base far behind them, and Hulk's making so many direction changes that Clint doesn't think he even knows what direction it was anymore. They're in a very green area, forests that give way to areas that might be farms of some kind, so Clint thinks they might still be in California.

Hulk eventually stops in a line of well-maintained trees, and puts Clint down after he paces off a large circle. His head turning back and forth. Looking, Clint realizes, for a threat of any kind.

Clint's knees want to fold under him when he's on the ground, but he sees something that immediately overrides it. Hulk's stopped in a grove of apple trees. He stumbles a bit before his wings flare out to steady him, like a drunk man holding his arms wide for balance. Clint doesn't even care as he reaches the closest tree and reaches up for an under-ripe apple.

It's a little bitter and makes his teeth itch, but Clint's stomach doesn't give a damn. He finishes it in three bites and reaches for another that actually looks like it might be alright.

Clint manages to stuff three more apples into himself before his stomach rebels. Clenching and turning in a way that warns him not to eat anymore, despite how very hungry he still is. Clint's got a nice red apple in hand already though and he'd hate to see it go to waste.

"Hey, aren't you hungry?" Clint asks in surprise when he turns to offer it up and finds Hulk just sitting and watching him. "I don't know how long they had you, but I know they didn't feed you at all where I could see."

He reaches up for another apple, and ends up just picking what he can carry because the apples are small and look like they'll be single bites for Hulk. The man looks at the first one Clint holds up to him like it's something new, and Clint wonders if he's just not seen a whole apple before or something.

"They're not ready, so they're a little sour, but that's," Clint stops as Hulk plucks the apple up to look at it closer. He studies it the way Clint used to study the soup Malika the strongwoman makes when it's her turn to cook. With suspicion, dread, and no little bit of genuine curiosity. Clint shrugs and offers up the wisdom Malika would utter every time when someone would deride her soup. "It's better than nothing, right?"

The apple crunches between Hulk's teeth in one bite like Clint suspected. He doesn't look overly pleased but that doesn't stop him from eating the rest of the apples one by one. Clint hands over the last one and sits down on the ground. Feeling exhaustion creep up like something physical. "You think it's safe to sleep here?"

Hulk sneers and growls at him before turning to eye the trees speculatively.

"Point," Clint admits as he flops over onto his stomach. He's having a hard time imagining anything being more dangerous than Hulk too, and that's enough of a comfort to put Clint out fast.

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Clint wakes up to the sun high in the sky, and completely alone.

He panics and claws his way to his feet. The wings flap and get in the way before he arches them up further away, and then he's got some _lift_ that helps pull him up. Clint almost gets distracted by the sudden realization that he can probably fly now.

Hulk is gone. The grass is flattened in a few areas and Clint sees that some of the trees have been cleaned of any apples. The branches are bare, and some of the trees have broken stubs near the top where it looks like the man just ripped the top halves off to get at the apples. Clint wonders what the owner of the field is going to think about that as he moves around a pile of treetops, following a trail of flattened grass.

He finds Hulk on the other side. Laid out on the ground, dead asleep, and back in the form of the hobo he'd worn when they first brought him in. Clint relaxes a bit and walks over to him. Noticing the way his pants haven't changed back with him.

The torn cloth hadn't really been doing much to preserve Hulk's dignity before, and it's doing an even worse job now that he's smaller. Clint snickers and crouches down to poke at his strange looking -now that Clint's gotten used to the green- face.

"Hulk," the man twitches and flinches away from the prod. Clint tries again, poking his cheek this time. "Hey, Hulk, wake up!"

Hulk wakes up with jerk and a startled gasp. Bolting upright and looking around wildly. Clint goes very still and waits for the man to settle down, waits for dark brown eyes to turn to him, "Uh, hello?"

He's completely human looking and sounding now, which probably helps more in the long run. Clint shrugs it off and settles back as Hulk casually gathers the shredded pants in his lap more securely. "You want some more apples before we get going? I don't think it's really safe to stick around here."

Clint doesn't think it's safe to stick around in the _country_ actually, but he's trying not to think too hard about that.

"Yes, yes, of course," Hulk's more talkative now too, and Clint wonders if that has something to do with his throat or something else. His eyes track Clint as he stand up again, lingering on the wings, and Clint can't say he really blames him much.

They look good in the sunlight, Clint runs a finger down the edge of one feather and it catches the light. There's a shimmer to the feathers that makes them look gold and flashy. Like the ravens that Clint used to see so often at one of the homes he was put in. Their wings looked oily and shone with more colors than just black.

Clint pulls down another apple and cautiously bites into it. His stomach doesn't rebel much so he eats it slowly as Hulk stands up and does something with the cloth to keep it up. It looks kinda like a kilt now. He doesn't take the apple Clint holds out though. Fixing him with that suspicious look he'd given the apple last night, "Uh, who are you?"

"Clint," he says slowly and takes back the apple. Hulk looks at him blankly, and there isn't a single bit of recognition in his eyes at all. "Bird Boy?" Clint tries but that only gets a confused frown. "I told you this last night after you tore that base apart. Do you even remember that?"

Hulk's eyes are distant and Clint remembers the bags of liquid that were pumped into him. The man was drugged up to his eyeballs, he probably wasn't firing on all cylinders despite how precise his actions were. "Oh, they had you on some heavy drugs didn't they? I think one of them was glowing..."

Clint trails off as another possibility comes up that he really should have thought of before. Those men had _something_ that made Clint grow wings. Who's to say they didn't have something -maybe blue and glowing in a bag- to make a man turn green and big?

"I got angry," Hulk says. Soft and so tired sounding that Clint doesn't know what to say back. The man's eyes are closed and he's pinching his nose like he's got a headache. "I got angry and then _he_ came out. How many people did _he_ kill this time?"

This time. Clint doesn't know what the hell that means but it relaxes something that'd tensed up at the thought of the two of them being completely new to these- changes. "Not enough."

"Excuse me?" The man asks in surprise, and it is _a_ man. Not Hulk. Not from the way he's acting and the way he's talking like last night there was a different person around. Clint's starting to get an idea on this mess.

"There was enough to chase after us, so, not enough," Clint shrugs at the horrified look the man gives him and feels the wings move with him. "What? You want me to feel sorry for the fuckers that _kidnapped_ me, made fucking _wings_ grow out my back, and were going to let me rot in a cage? Yeah, no, not going to happen."

"They experimented on you?" The man takes a step forward and takes his first good look at Clint. Eyes taking in the sorry state that Clint knows he's in. Thinner than usual, wearing jeans still stained with blood, and sneakers that have grime and filth caked into them. Clint can only imagine what his face and back look like. "You, how _old_ are you?"

"What's that matter?" Clint asks with a roll of his eyes. Like age mattered to fuckheads who wanted someone to punch around or just run through their mad scientist experiments. "Look can we just get out of here since Hulk," the man _flinches_ when Clint says the name, "didn't take care of all of whatever evil organization it was that had us? Or branch, I guess, are they really the army?"

"Yes, they are," the man says and Clint groans, because army means government and he's seen enough to know that you can't actually hide from them if they _really_ want to find you. "Alright, look, I know some people," Clint perks up because this is sounding like the start of a plan and he's got no idea beyond _run_. "They can take care of you. Get you set up with a new name. Maybe even see if," his eyes flicker and pause on the wings, "if you can be fixed."

"What? Are you," Clint gapes because the man's sounding a lot like the cop that had come to tell him and Barney that their parents were dead, and that bastard had _lied_. "Oh, hell no. That's the worst plan I've ever heard! How is that supposed to do anything _but_ make me a sitting duck for them?"

"They're not really looking for you," he replies with a sigh that Clint doesn't like at all. "You'll be safer the farther you are from me."

"Says who? You? You don't even remember what happened! It was just me and the big guy busting out of there," it's a good point though. The scientists had gotten so much more interested when Hulk and this man were brought in. "I like my odds with you two better than off fuck knows where."

"No," the man looks up at Clint, and he looks _stricken_. Almost afraid. "You can't do that. You'll be killed by _him_. I know you got free and you think you owe him, but the Hulk is not safe to be around, Clint. I'm not safe to be around."

"Fuck you!" Clint snaps, hard and angry on the Hulk's behalf. "I was in a fucking _cage_! Who the hell do you think let me out of it? One of the soldiers who stopped trying to shoot Hulk, or one of the scientists after they tried to suck blood out of him? No, they were all busy dying! I saw what he did, and I watched him come back to let me go!"

"I, no, look," the man looks aggrieved in a way that'd be funny if he weren't doing his best to piss Clint off. "Hulk is _dangerous_-"

"_Really_?" Clint puts as much scorn as he can spin into the word. He doesn't know this man, doesn't know his story, but he'll be damned if this man bad mouths Hulk in front of Clint. "I didn't get that when he wasted an entire base of people who strapped me, and you by the way, to a table to pump full of glowing blue shit. You know they were going to kill me, right? Once they had you going I was just a waste of space," it'd never been said aloud where he could hear it, but Clint's always been good at reading between the lines. At knowing when people don't want him around anymore. "Here's a newsflash for you; _anyone_ can be dangerous. Should I go all crazy cat lady and not deal with people to stay safe?" Clint lets his wings flare out to their full length. "It's a bit late for that anyway."

"I," the man closes his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. Hunching down over them and breathing loudly. Measure breathes like the kind Trick Shot taught him when Clint was first learning to shoot.

Clint pulls his wings back in and watches warily for a bit before feeling something sticky trail down his fingers. He looks down and his fingers have dug into the apple he was holding before he started yelling. Clint drops it and wipes the juice off on his jeans, for all the good it does. It just seems to rub the top layer of grime on the jeans off on his hand.

"Bruce," Clint looks up and the man looks resigned to something. "I'm Bruce Banner, and," he sighs deeply, "you're right Clint."

"Course I'm right," Clint quips back as Bruce turns and starts to look around them. Taking in where they are or something. "So, what are we going to do?"

"First," Bruce seems to see something he likes because he starts to walk off in one direction. Not even flinching as he walks barefooted right over some broken branches. "We're going to get some clothes, and then we're going to get cleaned and eat something."

"In that order?" Clint asks as he follows behind. "Think we'll be able to get any of that with one of us looking like such a freak?"

Bruce doesn't stop but he looks over his shoulder at Clint with a faint smile that grows larger when Clint fails to properly account for the height of his wings and gets jerked back by a low hanging branch. "Yes, I know of places that will help," Bruce turns back to the path only he seems to see, "besides, I think you'll find that far fewer people will find you freakish than you fear."

"Whatever you say," Clint mutters doubtfully, but doesn't actually stop following Bruce.

He doesn't know the man at all, doesn't really trust him that much, but Hulk's did him right when he gave the big guy a chance. It's only fair to give Bruce the same one. They can't be all that different where it matters since they're- Sharing the same body? Mind? Are the same person, like that one black and white movie about the doctor he saw last year? Something like that.

Clint doesn't know, he just knows that all the other choices he's got right now don't look as good as this one. Story of his life really. What's one more loud man with big fists after all? At least this one -two?- doesn't seem to want to swing them his way.

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	2. Chapter 2

**Caged Man  
**

**A Word**: Ibid.

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Clint is a strange kid, and it's not the wings growing out of his back that make Bruce think that. He's prickly like any teenager, prone to complaining and whining, and arrogant enough to think he knows all there is to know about the world. All common traits, Bruce supposes, except-

Except that Clint _does_ seem to know all there is to know. Maybe not all the technical things but all the important things at least. There's a look in his eyes that Bruce knows all too well. A general distrust in the world at large because it's proven itself unreliable again and again.

Clint's been kidnapped, imprisoned against his will, and experimented on. He's had his very body altered in ways that Bruce knows are not easy, in ways that look painful from the glimpses he's had of the raw skin on Clint's back. He's been through a truly traumatic event and he's acting like he's done nothing more than stub his toe in the middle of the day. Like it's all a stupid accident that he just has to suffer through. Something that happens too often to truly get upset about.

"Don't you," Bruce starts to ask before realizing what a truly _stupid_ question it is, and continues because now Clint's looking at him expectantly, "have anyone to go back to? Family, friends?"

"Nah," Clint snorts derisively, pausing when Bruce slows as they pass a natural creek that's been incorporated into the irrigation system. "Nobody who'd notice."

It's not a no, but Bruce doesn't press further on the point. There's lot of reasons to put that kind of apathetic attitude in someone, and most of them start with family.

"Alright," Bruce walks down a short bank to crouch by the running water and begins to scrub at the worst of the dirt on his skin. Clint follows and nearly tumbles right into the water when he doesn't compensate enough for the weight of his wings. "How old are you though? Really, how old," he adds when Clint hesitates tellingly, "I'm going to need to know this, Clint."

"Sixteen," Clint says with a shrug and gives up on the bank. Wading into the water itself before sitting down and doing an awkward twisting dance to try and clean his back. Bruce watches as rust colored water starts to uncurl from him in little eddies. "I'll be seventeen in a few months. What else you need to know? My social security number, blood type?"

"I might need a blood sample actually," Bruce pours a few hand fulls of water over his head before getting up to approach the kid. "Just to see what they did to you," Clint's wings are beaded up with water that's not really getting past them to his back. Bruce hovers a hand out to the side of the one closest, but doesn't touch. "It'd probably be a good idea to take a look at these too. Can you arch this one up?"

Clint eyes him with a frown but does slowly lift the wing up. The other lifts as well like he doesn't have enough control to tell them apart yet, which is good enough for the moment. "What, are you a doctor or something?"

"Sort of," Bruce leans in and carefully touches the mess that's Clint's back. He scoops water up, and carefully pours it over the worst of the dried mess that's stubbornly sticking to the raised area where the wings meet his back. Somewhere just below the shoulder blades. "I do have a doctorate, but my expertise is in gamma radiation."

The skin around the wings is tender looking when it's clean. Pink like newly healed skin and ropy with shiny scar tissue that's going to harden and cause trouble if Clint's not careful to stretch it now when it's new. Bruce traces the lines with his eyes and gets a pretty good picture of what happened from the jagged lines. "How long were you there?"

His skin looks to be at least a month along in healing, but that doesn't mean much.

"Don't know, a while? I couldn't keep track," Clint turns his head as far as he can to look at him. "They talked about radiation a lot when it was just me they were looking at. Radiation and some kind of serum."

Of course. If you can't get the original source you start experimenting on your own as best you can. Really, it doesn't surprise Bruce at all that Ross is playing with things best left alone.

Bruce sighs and checks the other side of Clint's back to be thorough. It's the same raised pink skin, but this side is threaded through with older scars under the grime. Raised white welts that look far older than anything a sixteen year old should have.

It's sickening, the things that he can now see have been done to Clint. The things that made him look into the face of a _monster_ and decide it was the best option. Bruce looks away and gets to his feet fast before the familiar heat of anger can go further.

He turns back to the path marked with well worn grooves for tires and focuses on how he's going to get them both clothed and on the road. "What do you know about Captain America, Clint?"

.

.

Clint knows what the average American knows about the old war hero. His origins and the propaganda that was so widely spread back then, but very little else.

"You mean he didn't actually punch Hitler?" Clint asks with a crushed sort of disappointment that makes Bruce chuckle.

"No, the war would've been over much sooner if Captain America got anywhere near him."

Clint takes the brief history in stride and seems a little enthused about the possible effects until he realizes, on his own, that the wings are likely all he's going to get out of it.

"They're not even useful," Clint flexes them and then flaps them hard a few times creating a brief whirlwind of air that stirs up dirt around them before stopping with a grimace. "Just holding them up like this makes me tired. How am I supposed to do anything else?"

Which is a good point, Clint wasn't made to support the wings and his skeletal structure and muscles won't adapt well to them. "You probably won't be able to fly unless your bones have become hollow," unlikely, as the Hulk would have likely crushed the boy by picking him up if that were the case. "As for the rest," Bruce thinks about adaption and the good points in altering a teenager who has at least one good growth spurt left in him. "Practice might help. It's like building up new muscle. If you don't work with it, it's hard and hurts."

They do find a farmhouse, eventually, and Bruce makes Clint stay back in the trees when he lets himself into one of the barns that doesn't look like it's used for animals. It's filled with tools and a small bank of lockers for hired hands. Two are locked, but Bruce manages to find enough clothing in the other three to get them respectable enough not to draw looks.

He changes first. Stuffing his feet into oversized boots and looking for anything else they might be able to use. The rough cloth of the clothes itches at his skin more so than usual. His senses still up on high from the change. It'll stick around for a few more hours before fading, and Bruce has become good at keeping his mind occupied to keep from dwelling on it too much.

Bruce gets a small bag filled with a variety of snacks and a few bottles of water before leaving. There's no movement anywhere as he goes back to Clint and Bruce is mostly sure it's Sunday. There's no other reason for such a large farm to be so deserted on a nice day. It might work in their favor a few more times before the day is out. He's learned in his time of running that people tend to either be more generous than usual on this day, or much stingier.

Clint's wings pose a problem that would be more fascinating if it didn't make the boy's jaw go tight and his eyes fix on the ground. The jacket Bruce found covers them just fine one Bruce uses parts of his shredded pants to tie them down to his back. The problem comes about afterwards. The wings aren't all that flexible and they quickly find out that Clint can't sit very well without the wings being very obvious or the position being very painful for him.

Free, the wings arch up over his head by at least a foot, and trail down to about mid thigh. It's easy for him to sit like that. Hidden beneath the coat, Clint's wings dip down almost to his ankles, and there's no way for Clint to sit straight up. He can, with some trouble, sit sideways comfortably enough that Bruce decides they're going to try hitch-hiking.

Three trucks with only the single bench seat offer to pick them up and Bruce turns them down cheerfully enough that the drivers aren't very likely to remember them. Hopefully. A dozen or more cars with perfectly empty back seats don't even slow down as they walk down the road. It's around noonish before a van slows to a stop, and they get in with an older couple who look like the lone hold outs from the sixties and the most curious eight year old Bruce has ever met.

Clint stretches out in the mostly clear back of the van and does a remarkable job of fielding the thousand different questions that Callum throws in between breathing. Bruce finds himself dragged into a discussion on nuclear weaponry that's not very interesting but keeps their eyes all off the odd way Clint's back twitches every so often.

Bruce has half formed plans to get Clint someplace safe still, despite the boy's arguments. It's simply not safe being so near him for a long time. For any amount of time really. He can't just leave the boy though. Not yet. There isn't anyone in the country, maybe the world, who's better suited to figuring out what exactly has been done to Clint. Not if the people who took them both, not if Ross is trying to replicate Bruce's research.

The rather obvious physical change can't be the whole of it either. Not if Clint was exposed to some sort of serum and radiation combination. Finding out if any radiation was used will be easy, but it's the rest that Bruce needs to figure out. Quickly.

"Kid's use up so much energy," Megan says out of the blue suddenly, and Bruce has to back track a bit to make sure he hasn't said something. He follows her look back and realizes that the constant noise from the back had stopped sometime. The kids are both asleep. Clint still stretched out on his stomach, and the smaller boy next to him. Close to drooling on Clint's arm which he's using as a pillow.

"It's been a long day," Bruce agrees with a smile. "We walked most of the time."

"You're so lucky he's old enough to keep up," Devon enthuses from behind the wheel. "We've got a few more years before Cal's old enough to do cross country trips like this."

The conversation picks back up but going onto the topic of when kids are really ready to appreciate nature and Bruce nods along when needed. Mind mapping out his next move.

.

.

They make it as far as Bakersfield before Devon and Megan's route veers too much for Bruce's comfort. They wander the streets, Bruce's bag almost empty. They've got a sleeve of crackers and half a bottle of water left. He's debating between taking them to Fresno or LA next when Bruce realizes Clint isn't shadowing his steps anymore.

"Clint?" Bruce turns but there's only a few people walking along window shopping, not paying any attention or looking overly upset. "Clint!"

Bruce has just enough time to think that they've been tracked down already before Clint casually walks out of a small side alley halfway down the block. It's just enough time for Bruce's heart to start accelerating, and Bruce turns to slump against the side of a building. Closing his eyes and breathing slow, pushing down on that rising feeling that always precedes his loss of control. "Don't do that, Clint!"

"What?" Clint's sounds annoyed and looks it when Bruce opens his eyes eventually. "I found a place we can hole up in for the night. It's a few blocks away, and they've got private bathrooms too," Clint says the last with no small amount of glee.

"You can't do that, Clint," Bruce ignore the good information that they're going to take advantage of for the moment. He rubs a hand over his face and nearly groans at the boy's confused look. "Clint, we're being tracked. Even if you can't see them, Ross and his people are looking for us. All the time, and a lot of other people too. If you just disappear like that I'm going to think they caught up with us."

Clint looks slightly guilty, but he still doesn't get it. Bruce can see the confusion and lack of understanding in his eyes.

"When I get angry," Bruce starts and then stops. They're still in the wide open streets and they're starting to gather attention. Casual attention, but any is bad right now. Bruce steps away from the wall and pulls Clint along with him. "When I get upset or hurt, I lose control. I go away, and _he_ comes out. And when he comes out, he's angry and looking to destroy things."

"Hulk," Clint says and there's realization in his voice as he jogs ahead of them. Turning right when Bruce would have kept going forward. This block is less populated and Clint drops back to walk next to him with a grin on his face that floors Bruce. "Is that why he kept roaring? I didn't really think he could talk at all until he called be Bird Boy."

"What?" Bruce nearly stutters. His mind already going through another lecture on how bad the Hulk is. Something that he's never actually had to think much on having to explain. Usually a single look at him was all the argument that was needed. "He spoke?"

Bruce is thrown by the casual comment from Clint though. It's the first time that he's ever heard of the Hulk speaking. As far as he knew the other guy wasn't _capable_ of the kind of thought needed to produce words.

"You really don't remember anything do you?" Clint asks curiously as he slows. They''re across the street from an unmarked building that takes a long look for Bruce to realize is a shelter. Probably privately owned due to the way it looks almost indistinguishable from the apartment buildings around it.

"No, I don't," flashes of pain and anger and the vague impression of violence. Piecing together the Hulk's appearances is usually done afterwards through the inevitable media blitz that follows one of his rampages. "What did he say?"

"Well, he told me his name," Clint slumps against a lamppost and critically eyes the block they're on. "He also called me Bird Boy and said I was going to go free."

Bruce doesn't know what to say to that. He's never had to think about the Hulk this much before. Nothing beyond the range of destruction he causes. It's incomprehensible to everything Bruce knows and he doesn't know what to do with this bit of information.

"They're getting ready to serve dinner. Let's go!" Clint moves before Bruce can figure out what to say. Jogging across the street to join a group of people starting to line up by the door. Some obviously homeless, and others looking like they're very comfortably situated in life. Clint is glanced over quickly by the group, and a space is made for him quickly. Towards the front, but behind a family with two small children who come walking up shortly after.

Clint is a strange young man, but it's fair, Bruce thinks as he wanders across the street and finds himself being subtly prodded up to a spot next to Clint. This whole situation is strange to begin with, and if the boy wasn't a little off he'd likely not have survived the experimentation in the first place.

.

.

"Where are we going?" Clint asks later, after a warm meal, and a shower experience that sounded like it deserved its own epic tale from what Bruce could hear through the closed door. Clint had eventually emerged soaking wet from the small bathroom into the only slightly larger room with bunk beds they'd been given after dinner. Bruce had slipped into the bathroom for his own shower while Clint began a battle against his wings with a rough towel. His curses had floated in through the door and the pounding sound the water made against the tile.

"We can't stay in the US, right? I mean, you said the Army's after us."

Whether they're in the United States or not won't be as much of a deterrent as Clint might think it to be, but there are advantages to it. "South," Bruce tells the web of wire holding Clint's mattress up over him.

"Like Mexico?" Clint asks, and there's a slur in his voice that makes Bruce smile. "I know some Spanish."

"That might help," get them in trouble, but Bruce makes a note to quiz him on his vocabulary in the morning. "But I was in Mexico when they caught me," he'd gotten too comfortable, too settled, and something had been slipped into his food. Something unnaturally strong to have had any effect on him. "So further than that."

"South America?" The bed creaks as Clint shifts and one wing rustles as it flops ungainly over the side of the bed. It stretches down nearly to the floor, and does a good job of blocking out the light that had been coming in from the window facing the street. "What's down there?"

"A lot of people," Bruce responds. People with more problems to deal with than a stranger who keeps to themself. People who don't need real names or identification, and will keep to themselves when the wrong kind of stranger comes in and starts asking pointed questions. Bruce had stuck to small towns in Mexico at first that taught him that. He'd left a few of them after only a few weeks when the people started circling in around him too tightly. Suspicious eyes locked on a new person or group that he'd never stuck around long enough to figure out who they were working for. "It's easy to get lost there."

Clint doesn't respond, and Bruce can hear the faint sound of his even breathing. He listens to it closely before closing his eyes and letting the exhaustion that always follows him for a few days after a transformation take him down.

.

.

In the end, Bruce decides to forgo Fresno and LA all together. They leave the shelter early in the morning. Well before when they were told the had to check out, and the sun is just barely rising. Clint blinks owlishly around him as he follows behind Bruce, but he's not stumbling or protesting the hour. Bruce traces their steps backward from the day before. Stopping just outside of the construction site that he'd made note of yesterday.

There are two metal containers in one corner of the yard with massive padlocks on them. Bruce squints at them in the near dark, trying to determine if he'll be able to open them. He's learned, since he started running, the benefits of being able to pick a lock. He's just not all that good at it, even when he has the proper tools for it. The slim wire and shard of metal he's found aren't going to be good enough to compensate for him.

"We need something?" Clint crowds up next to him and looks at the lock briefly before snatching the tools from Bruce. Bruce steps back and watches as Clint deftly picks the lock in less time than it takes for Bruce to realize he's good at this.

The container swings open with a groan, and Bruce holds off on the questions he wants to ask. It's early, but construction sites get started very early. He steps in and looks for the small yellow box that's bound to be in there. This container has the fewest tracks leading to it, and Bruce's counting on what he needs being put aside since it's not used a lot. It takes five minutes before he finds it.

"What's this?" Clint takes the equipment as Bruce shuts and relocks the container. Looking at the instrument face and tube.

"A Geiger counter," Bruce answers and has to physically push to get Clint moving again.

"But this is used for-" Clint follows Bruce with little more prodding and they cut through the site and enter a section of the city that's mostly warehouses. "Why do we need it?"

"To get an idea of what's been done to you," Bruce has a vague idea of the layout of this part of the city and takes them further in. Looking for the tracks that he remembers passing through once before. It's harder to find them when his memories are all from inside a train that hadn't stopped though. "It's possible they used radiation on you, and I'd like to find that out for sure."

Clint doesn't ask anymore questions but when Bruce looks back he cans see the way his coat is shuddering uncomfortably. They're reactive with Clint's mood. Bruce has noticed it more often as Clint gets used to moving with them, and stops holding them awkwardly still.

They're lucky when they find the tracks. A train of cars is already there. Loaded and ready to be run, but unattended at the moment. There's locks on the cars that are loaded, but it's a simple matter to find one that only has a stack of empty boxes in it and won't be checked very well later on. It's a back and forth kind of thing that's just another thing Bruce has learned over time. As long as people don't mess with the product being transported, most railway workers won't try too hard to discourage train hoppers from riding the rails.

Clint seems familiar with this as well, and doesn't ask questions when Bruce begins to stack the boxes into a temporary shield from the cursory inspection the train will get. It's only afterwards that Bruce turns to the Geiger counter again.

"Hold that," Bruce points at the tube, careful not to touch it in anyway. It's going to be hard enough getting an accurate reading in the enclosed space. He's likely only to get one shot at it in the first few minutes of the reading before his own radiation signature contaminates the readings.

It's a simple instrument. Meant to be used if something iffy is spotted and get a quick yes or no indication of possible radiation. There's not much sensitivity in the machine and there's no real way of telling what kind it might be, but gamma radiation is one of the most commonly detected radiations so he's hopeful.

"Aren't these things supposed to make noise?" Clint asks as Bruce watches the readout. "It always clicks in the movies."

"Movies tend to exaggerate," Bruce replies, but takes a moment to adjust the instrument. Turning on the option that allows it to be used without having to constantly monitor it. The loud clicks fill the car of the train much to Clint's obvious delight.

The numbers are telling, and there's no doubting that there's traces of radiation on Clint. Not as much as what Bruce carries with him, he sees that as the counter picks up his presences and the numbers spike, but far more than can be considered safe. Clint shows no signs of being sick or adversely effected though, even after one, possibly two months. It's another observation that Bruce can only extrapolate on without having an actual lab to run tests. He can't even measure the decay rate properly to figure out how much he was exposed to.

Bruce turns the counter off just as the clicks start to pick up in pace, and pushes it to the side. Settling in for a wait with a sigh.

"That good, huh?" Clint shrugs off his coat and unties the wrappings around his wings. Arching them up over his head so he can sit comfortably. The boxes are high enough to hide them with ease.

"They used radiation on you," Bruce says the obvious and ignores Clint's eyeroll, "What kind and how much, I can't tell with just that. But the amount that's still on you is enough to make most people very, very sick."

"Am I going to have to worry about losing my hair now?" Clint asks as he shifts over to lean carefully against the metal wall next to Bruce. His wings flattening and pushing at Bruce before settling down. He can feel them through his shirt sleeves, a little warmer than he'd expect. "No, wait. Don't they castrate people with radiation? Did I get sterilized?"

"Possibly," Bruce answers when Clint reaches over to poke him when he tries to close his eyes and ignore the morbid glee in Clint's voice. "Clint, I really don't know what's been changed in you."

"What's to know?" Clint sits back and moves into a sprawl that looks highly uncomfortable. "I've got bird wings growing out of my back. It can't be much worse than that."

"Yes, actually," Bruce says as Clint closes his eyes. Laces his hands together on his chest and looks like he's going to go right back to sleep. "It _can_ be worse."

"Says you," Clint mutters before tilting away slightly. Clearly over the conversation.

.

.

It's several hours before the train starts to move, taking them further than they could get by foot or hitchhiking. It doesn't matter though. Bruce is only just nodding off to the jolting of the cars when an explosion rips the doors open. Heated metal imploding in a sudden shock of sound and light that draws a pained shout from Clint that Bruce barely hears over the pounding of his heart.

His vision goes dark and Bruce opens his mouth to scream just as he loses the ability to do anything.

.

.

Bruce's first sense to come back is always taste. His mouth is dry and tastes like dust. Better than blood, but not as pleasant as when he woke up tasting apples.

The memory stirs Bruce further as it brings Clint to mind, and it's a sudden spike of fear and dread that propels Bruce to open his eyes. To jerk upward and find himself in a desert -the Hulk's favorite kind of place- alone. He has a sense memory of explosions and the sound of heavily armed military helicopters but nothing else.

He doesn't _remember_ and he's all alone in the desert.

"Oh, god," Bruce looks at his hands. Rough with callouses that he never built up on his own, but seem to transfer over with each transformation. They're covered in a thin layer of dust that turns dark under his fingernails. There's no other sign of the violence on him, but there never really is. There hadn't even been a drop of blood on him when Betty-

Bruce hunches over his hands and shakes.

.

.

The first sounds don't register to Bruce. They're soft and possibly an animal, and his mind dismisses them. Animals tend to sense what humans can't and steer clear of him. They're safe because they don't stick around. They don't argue that Bruce isn't dangerous, that the Hulk won't hurt them or worse. Animals just _know_.

It's not until something bristly but soft pokes at his back that Bruce looks up.

Clint stands over him with an uncertain half-grimace, half-smile on his face. "You feeling sick or what?"

"Clint," Bruce chokes out after a surprised moment of dumbfounded staring. The young man is bare chested, holding his coat awkwardly, and looks completely and utterly unharmed. "Clint, what-"

"Here," Clint crouches down and dumps the coat on the ground. Scratched up water bottle roll out of it. All filled with a murky water that Bruce gratefully gulps down when Clint hands him one. "It took me a while to find some water. I was going to drag your unconscious ass to it when I found it, but there was a bunch of trash there already. Don't worry, I cleaned them before filling them."

"Clint, you're," Bruce coughs once. Harsh to clear his throat of dust. "Are you alright? What happened?"

"The Army, I guess, they weren't wearing uniforms this time," Clint says with a scowl and idly plays with one of the bottles before opening it to drink it. "Bastards hit the train and derailed it. Stupid move if you ask me," Clint grins around the mouth of the bottle at him, "Hulk _really_ didn't like that and wanted to have words with them."

Bruce feels sick. Sick not only with the death he almost certainly left behind, but also with relief that Clint's not only alive but also unharmed.

"You'd think they'd be smarter than to lead with an attack guaranteed to bring Hulk out. I mean, aren't they supposed to plan ahead and all that? Who thinks it's a smart idea to make the superstrong guy you're hunting mad as an opening move?" Clint shrugs and rolls another bottle toward Bruce. Pointedly nudging it into his thigh until Bruce picks it up. "They didn't last long, and Hulk brought us here," Clint sweeps one arm out to indicate the vastness of the desert. "Wherever here is. I don't think we're even in California anymore. The big guy can get some serious distance when he's trying."

They're likely in Arizona, maybe Mexico if they're lucky. Bruce isn't used to being lucky though. Even though he has no other word to use for why Clint's still here and unharmed.

"There's a leanto back with the water," Clint says, supremely unconcerned with the mental contortions Bruce is going through. "It'll keep us out of the sun while you rest. Or me, since you're not even burnt."

Clint looks aggrieved as he scratches at one of his bare shoulders. It's going dangerously red and Bruce can tell it's going to stark peeling in a few days. The bridge of his nose and tops of his cheek are the same. It's not as bad as it should be all things considered. Clint gathers the empty bottles and stuffs them back into the coat before standing up.

"You ready?" Clint turns and walks away a few steps before looking back at Bruce. Impatient and shifting from foot to foot as he waits for Bruce to get to his feet. He looks tired. Of everything, not just physically, like he's just waiting for the day to be over so he can turn his back on a bad day filled with minor annoyances. Not like he's just had to flee an army in the company of a monster again.

Clint is a strange kid, and Bruce is left speechless by it all as he climbs to his feet. The heat of the sun on the ground barely registers through the calluses on his feet. Bruce follows behind Clint without another word. The exhaustion of the transformation flaring and combining with the thwarted grief, leaving Bruce in a numb state that makes walking the full extent of what he's able to do. Walking and watching the brown wings in front of him bob and flare in the slight wind the whole way.

Grateful that he's not alone.

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End file.
